Is it worth finishing I Protest?

A few months ago game devs from all over the world took part in “MolyJam“, creating games based upon the humourous ideas from spoof twitter account @PeterMolydeux. I decided to get in on the action, picking “Imagine a game in which you have to join protests to make changes to the rules within the game’s world”. Alas when it came to the weekend I found myself a bit tired from a week’s work and a few drinks the night before. Unfortunately I ended up only putting in a few hours, getting no where near the project I wanted. Check out the (lack of) progress I made on the I Protest page.

The idea was to create a game centered around collecting protesters, but how that would work, the “end game” and what not would constantly change. You could then use your protestors to fight for or against the various ongoing protests. What I liked most about this idea was that it would effectively allow me to create various different primitive gameplay mechanisms, from a top down shooter to frantic point & click to running around trying to catch protestors.

My “grand idea” was also to include elements of a resource management game so the game could evolve very differently depending on which laws you protest for or against. It wouldn’t be easy as there’d need to be a fair bit of game logic to ensure that you don’t have a rule requiring you to build houses for cash without there being a means for generating cash. However if done well, it could be rather interesting!

Rather than just hoping for the appropriate rules to pop up, I’d also provide a menu that allows the player to start a protest. This would allow the player to really dictate what sort of a gameplay they want from the game and change anything that they dislike.

In terms of further developing what is there, I’d make some minor tweaks to artwork but the main thing that I’d work on is adding / removing protesters. The current dialog has a lot of text and doesn’t clearly tell you what is going on.

Well that’s just some of the ideas that I have for making a game in which you have to join protests to make changes to the rules within the game’s world.

If you like the idea then you can vote for it to be developing into a released game. The next game that I’ll be discussing will be BODMASter.